Kevin Brennan
Main Page: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)Department Debates - View all Kevin Brennan's debates with the Department for Transport
(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr McLoughlin
I agree with my right hon. Friend. It is vital that we do nothing to put back the very ambitious programme for improvements to our railways that will, in the long term, benefit all our constituents.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
The Secretary of State seems to want to blame the shadow Secretary of State and other Members of the House for not warning him that this was about to happen. When he said sorry in his original reply, was he taking responsibility personally as Secretary of State for Transport for the chaos that occurred or was he simply apologising on somebody else’s behalf?
Mr McLoughlin
I was saying as Secretary of State for Transport that I was very sorry for any inconvenience to passengers. Along with the chief executive of Network Rail, I have put in place measures to ensure that we learn from what went wrong in these incidents, which were clearly unacceptable. The point I would make to the hon. Gentleman is that when I made these points in the last Transport questions and in giving evidence to the Select Committee just before Christmas, nobody said that we were being over-ambitious.